It was organic chemistry's Manhattan Project: two governments, nearly forty laboratories, a thousand chemists, all in the midst of the second world war, all searching together for a way to synthesize penicillin from scratch. Read More

Dynamo Micropower, a startup housed at Greentown Labs, will receive a $175,000 loan, the group announced Monday. The money, distributed by MassDevelopment's Emerging Technology Fund, adds to the $2.5 million in private investment and grant funding that the Somerville-based turbine maker has received over the last 18 months.
Read More

Over the past several months, two PhD candidates in MIT's CSAIL program have been busy attempting to solve a few tough questions: How do you make cybersecurity sexy? How can you create excitement about the field? And perhaps most importantly, how do you take the impressive work being done at academic institutions and find ways to bring it to market?
Read More

If you haven't been following the breakup of the 35-year-old venture capital firm Atlas Venture, which once invested in both tech and biotech, partner Peter Barrett sums it up this way: "In this divorce, the life sciences side kept the name, and the tech side got the house." So Atlas's team of tech investors is casting about for a new name, but staying in East Cambridge. And the biotech crew, still known as Atlas, just moved into new offices yesterday atop 400 Technology Square in Cambridge, midway between the Kendall and Central stations on the Red Line.
Read More

Millions of Americans battle anxiety disorders and depression, conditions that sap social ties and leave sufferers vulnerable if they lack a viable support system. Now, a group of researchers with ties to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are creating a private social network where people can anonymously share their daily struggles, and also find kinship.
While the forum won’t replace professional treatment or therapy, Robert Morris, who created the system as a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab, said it does show promise as a reliable support for people battling stress. Read More

Only a few blocks from where Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh worked his first union construction job as a teen, the software company Autodesk plans to open a new innovation lab focused on new technologies that are changing the building industry. Walsh plans to speak this evening at an event announcing the new facility, located on Drydock Avenue in the Marine Industrial Park, which will also house about 200 Autodesk employees who currently work in Waltham.
Read More

It’s a tall order, blending high fashion with high tech, but when you’re working with 4-inch heels headed for the runway, the stakes are even higher.
An international team of engineers is taking on this challenge in earnest: They have created a “smart shoe” that, chameleon-like, can change its colors and patterns, according to a wearer’s whims.
Their reasoning: Why cede closet space to a dozen pairs of shoes when you can own one pair that can transform into many?
Read More

Sometimes, the new personal-tech advances we think will be least useful end up being the ones we come to rely on most.
Withings, a French health-tracking and Internet-of-things company that has its US headquarters in Boston, has developed an array of fitness and wellness products that can do everything from monitor a user’s health and sleep habits to help keeping an eye on a home while being able to detect air quality.
Read More

One of the first groups to begin raising money for victims of the Boston Marathon bombings was a collection of founders, venture capitalists, and employees from the local tech and innovation community, and startup- and entrepreneur-focused nonprofit TUGG helped lead that effort.
Read More

Former CIA covert operations officer Valerie Plame joined Boston-based Starling Trust Sciences as an adviser this week. Starling aims to establish a digital trust infrastructure that would give people the ability to identify and connect with trustworthy peers. With the technology Starling is developing, users will see how trustworthy another person is based on various factors, including the number of mutual connections. Read More

Dr. Devin Mann is a very busy man: He specializes in population health management and informatics at Boston Medical Center, serves on the national Health IT policy committee, and also sees patients in general practice whenever he can. He shared his digital habits with the Download. Read More

In mid-April, TechBreakfast — a monthly opportunity for entrepreneurs, business owners, and investors to gather in an informal environment — is hosting its largest Boston-area event with its first local Ask a VC breakfast at Microsoft NERD in Cambridge. Read More